LAHORE – The death toll from a powerful earthquake and its dozens ofaftershocks that jolted Turkey and Syrialinkto rise. The first earthquake hit at 4:17am (01:17 GMT) on Monday and itsepicenter was in the Pazarcik district of Kahramanmaras Province.
According to the United States Geological Service (USGS), the earthquakestruck at a depth of about 17.9km (11 miles). Turkey’s Disaster andEmergency Management Authority (AFAD) said the magnitude was 7.4 near thecities of Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep.
At least 3,600 deaths were reported in Turkey, while more than 1,600 peoplelost their lives in Syria. The death toll is likely to climb as rescueefforts are underway to recover people trapped under the rubble ofthousands of buildings flattened during the earthquake.
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced seven daysnational mourning in the country for the victims the earthquake. Worldleaders have pledged to send aid after Turkiye issued an internationalappeal for help.
Turkiye, formerly Turkey, is located in one of the seismically activeregions and is more vulnerable to such disasters. The country of around 85million suffered one of the worst quakes in 1999 in which more than 17,000people were killed.
Conspiracy theories
Amid the catastrophic situation, a section of social media is busy incoining conspiracy theories that hint towards human involvement in thedeadly earthquake. A number of videos, which show lighting strikes at thetime of earthquake, are being posted on social media claiming that thequake was artificially made. Some users believe the lighting strikes arenot normal in earthquakes.
Read Top Stories
A user also linked the earthquake with HAARP – The High-frequency ActiveAuroral Research Program – a US research centre studies the properties andbehaviour of the ionosphere.
“The earthquake in Turkey looks like a punitive operation (HAARP) by NATOor the US against Turkey. The video shows lightning strikes, which are notnormal in earthquakes, but always happen in harp operations,” reads thetweet.
On the other hand, some responded to the claim stating that earthquakelightning is believed to be electric charging from certain types of rock inthe earth’s crust from seismic activity. It may also be a power gridsubstation being destroyed.
This is not the first time that HAARP was blamed for such calamities by theconspiracy theorists. Earlier it was claimed for the 2010 Haiti earthquake,the 2010 Chile earthquake and tsunami, and the 2011 Japan earthquake andtsunami. A massive landslide in Philippines that killed more than athousand people in 2006 was also linked to HAARP.